How do you leverage a community of passionate users and consulting partners in your go to market approach?

Having a passionate community of users was one of the things that made me sure that Airtable would be a great company to join. If you see a product that has a huge group of people who are invested in it, love using it, and want to provide whatever feedback they can to make it better, that’s when you know you’re onto something special.

The Airtable Community is made up of our most active and engaged users from very small solopreneurs to employees at large enterprise companies. Right now, we leverage the community to get a pulse on what these customers are thinking about, the product suggestions they have, and where they are blocked by or frustrated with our product. Our team hops in to answer questions and give guidance, but we really see our community as a place for our customers and advocates to interact with one another, find inspiration, and connect. What's incredible is that a lot of our Community's success has happened due to customers, rather than internal efforts.

That said, we have a huge business opportunity with the Airtable Community to leverage the positive feedback in our acquisition efforts, to use the helpful tips and tricks provided in the Community to help new customers get onboarded, and to partner more closely with Airtable specialists and experts as they look to create business opportunities for themselves in training and onboarding new Airtable customers. Solutions partners and developers who build on the Airtable Platform will be hugely important in our Community efforts and we’ll want to be sure we create special programs and incentives for them as they spread the word about Airtable and bring in new business.

We’d also love to parlay our online Community efforts into in person events and meetups when the time is right and this global pandemic is over (hopefully soon!) so we can create real, personal connections with our advocates.

Leveraging your existing user base can be done in a number of ways, but if I could highlight only one thing it would be this: have someone dedicated to it full-time. 

You can moderate communities on Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, etc. But it's a lot of work to not only deliver value on a daily basis, but also foster a culture where the majority of folks are willing to contribute. There's nothing worse than having a "community" with thousands of people but no active chatter. Much better to have a community of 20 active folks!